way of gettin’ out of the little bedroom in back there except through this room.  The windows are too small fer a big man to get through.  I’ll tell you what, we’ll lock him up in there an’ then you won’t hev to worry none an’ neither will we.  You can jest spread out them Navajos there and go to sleep right plump ag’in the door, an’ there won’t nobody hev to relieve you all night.”

“Sure,” said Eddie, “leave it to me—­I’ll watch the slicker.”

Satisfied that their prisoner was safe for the night the Villistas and Grayson departed, after seeing him safely locked in the back room.

At the mention by the foreman of his guard’s names—­ Eddie and Shorter—­Billy had studied the face of the young American cowpuncher, for the two names had aroused within his memory a tantalizing suggestion that they should be very familiar.  Yet he could connect them in no way with anyone he had known in the past and he was quite sure that he never before had set eyes upon this man.

Sitting in the dark with nothing to occupy him Billy let his mind dwell upon the identity of his jailer, until, as may have happened to you, nothing in the whole world seemed equally as important as the solution of the mystery.  Even his impending fate faded into nothingness by comparison with the momentous question as to where he had heard the name Eddie Shorter before.

As he sat puzzling his brain over the inconsequential matter something stirred upon the floor close to his feet, and presently he jerked back a booted foot that a rat had commenced to gnaw upon.

“Helluva place to stick a guy,” mused Billy, “in wit a bunch o’ man-eatin’ rats.  Hey!” and he turned his face toward the door.  “You, Eddie!  Come here!”

Eddie approached the door and listened.

“Wot do you want?” he asked.  “None o’ your funny business, you know.  I’m from Shawnee, Kansas, I am, an’ they don’t come no slicker from nowhere on earth.  You can’t fool me.”

Shawnee, Kansas!  Eddie Shorter!  The whole puzzle was cleared in Billy’s mind in an instant.

“So you’re Eddie Shorter of Shawnee, Kansas, are you?” called Billy.  “Well I know your maw, Eddie, an’ ef I had such a maw as you got I wouldn’t be down here wastin’ my time workin’ alongside a lot of Dagos; but that ain’t what I started out to say, which was that I want a light in here.  The damned rats are tryin’ to chaw off me kicks an’ when they’re done wit them they’ll climb up after me an’ old man Villa’ll be sore as a pup.”

“You know my maw?” asked Eddie, and there was a wistful note in his voice.  “Aw shucks! you don’t know her—­ that’s jest some o’ your funny, slicker business.  You wanna git me in there an’ then you’ll try an’ git aroun’ me some sort o’ way to let you escape; but I’m too slick for that.”